As Kamala Harris weighs a run for California governor in 2026, state Democrats are expressing their fears that the former vice president “comes in with baggage” that could hurt the party down-ballot and energize Republicans.
“There’s no groundswell for [Harris’s] candidacy,” one California House Democrat told CNN on condition of anonymity. “In fact, I think it would only fire up Republicans and hurt our ability to win the four to five seats that we need to win to win the House and hold on to three seats that we just flipped in 2024.”
“She comes in with baggage,” the Democrat said.
Other California Democrats expressed frustration that Harris appears more focused on staging a 2028 presidential bid than on leading California. “Once you’re the vice president of the United States, there’s only one place to go—it’s president,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D., Calif) told CNN. “For me, if I was vice president and all of a sudden I lose, it would be a fallback to me. I hate to put it so bluntly.”
Some major Democratic donors and interest group leaders, meanwhile, are insisting that Harris still needs to answer for her failed presidential bid last year, according to CNN. Harris took over the Democratic nomination from then-president Joe Biden and went on to lose to Donald Trump, failing to carry a single swing state.
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) last week sidestepped the question of whether she would like to see Harris run for governor, saying, “I want her to do whatever she wants to do.”
This isn’t the first time that California Democrats have publicly aired doubts about Harris, who said that she will make up her mind about a gubernatorial bid by late summer.
“Kamala just reminds you we are in this complete shit storm,” a California Democrat who contributed six figures to her presidential bid told Politico last month, noting that another Harris candidacy would only remind Democratic voters of the “traumatizing” 2024 election.
In May, many delegates at the California Democratic Party convention “openly fretted that California was simply a fallback option for Harris,” Politico reported at the time. “We haven’t really heard from her on California issues since Trump’s inauguration,” state party delegate Madison Zimmerman told Politico, stressing that “California isn’t a consolation prize.”
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Author: Matthew Xiao
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